


Broken From The Battle

by sobefarrington



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Cabin Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sobefarrington/pseuds/sobefarrington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint is hurt and seeks refuge in a SHIELD cabin until help can arrive. He recalls the events that led him there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken From The Battle

It took a few tries for Clint to get the fire to light, the cold damp air of the cabin crisping his bones as he stood striking matches for five minutes, but it did. Once it had caught it brightened the room with an orange-yellow glow, slowly warming the half dressed archer.

He curled himself into a ball on the small mat in front of the fire. The cabin had been abandoned some time back, SHEILD taking possession of it and turning it into a make-shift shelter for agents in passing. Clint happened to remember its existence when he was lost in the woods, traipsing to its location with great difficulty. One of his legs broken from the battle.

It had been some time since he’d been hurt as badly as he was. Both his right arm and leg broken from a fall he couldn’t recover from quick enough. Cuts and bruises covering his entire body, a black eye so badly puffed out he couldn’t open it. He’d tied off and patched up the worst of the bleeders with the shirt he’d had one, but a gash across his chest the carried over to his good arm were deep and still seeping. He was weak from the fight and the walk to his current safety and worried that sleep would take him to a scary place that he might not come back from. He was without a phone to call for help and only a knife to defend himself. He knew his odds and he didn’t like the numbers.

The flames flickered and he inched closer to them, searching out any extra warmth they offered his tired aching body. He closed his eyes and breathed in with deep concentration. It hurt his lungs to expel the effort to keep him alive, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

The physical pain was something he’d not felt in ages, but the emotional toll was new, as he felt his chest tighten with a sob he didn’t see coming. Because the injuries he endured were from allied hands.

 

It had been an accident. A small chemical spill on the hellicarrier. A small mistake in Tony’s lab, and in the blink of an eye Bruce had turned. No one thought much of it, as the purple liquid hit the floor, and they thought just as much of it when Bruce’s breathing sped up and he burst out of his shell into the big guy. Because he’s learned how to control it.

But something about the chemical compound and the gas it released, combined with the gamma radiation that Bruce already had in him turned a calm, controlled Hulk into a raging ball of destruction.

He smashed through the glass wall, sending the entire crew into a frenzy of running SHEILD agents. Tony took cover and Natasha yelled after the big guy, but it was to no avail.   
Clint, worried for his best friend, chased after him, drawing his attention by shooting arrows just past his head.

“Come on Big Guy. That’s enough smashing. Take control.”

Clint’s voice had been commanding. Forceful. The same voice he used to calm Bruce back into himself several times before. Every time the Big Guy had turned to him with empathy and understanding and looked Clint in the eye. Every time Clint gave the Hulk all of his attention and looked directly back at him, peering into the soul of the giant green rage monster and finding the spirit of Bruce inside, drawing the man back out to the surface.

This time, when the Hulk turned to face the Hawk, there was nothing but malice and contempt in the green man’s eyes. Clint tried to find the soul he cared for in the mess that was the Hulk, but it wasn’t there. There was only rage. And the obvious urge to smash. And that’s exactly what the Hulk did.

He charged at Clint, who in a moment of compassion placed his bow at his feet and called out to Bruce as the Hulk came within a hair of his face and smashed him into the ground.

Clint continued to call out to his friend beyond the jade exterior, hoping that Bruce would hear his pleas as Clint heard his bones break, but the Hulk was clearly in full control.

“Only Hulk. Bird Man’s friend not here.”

Clint sighed through the pain, feeling the split in his lip as he ran his tongue over it. Hulk lifted him by his collar and brought him up so they were face to face.

“Hulk no like Bird Man. Other Guy think different. Heart hurts when Hulk smash Bird Man. But Hulk Happy when he smash Bird Man.”

The green guy smiled something frightening and tossed a confused Hawk through a nearby window. Clint didn’t see the trees that broke his fall, he only felt them. Each and every branch that batted him on his descent. 

He’d thought it was over when he landed in a bed of snow. His jeans and ripped shirt absorbing the wet cold and seeping toward his bones the moment he landed, but a familiar crashing and ripping sound let him know that the Hulk had followed where he had gone.

“Hulk tired of Other Guy hiding him away. Hulk want to be free like his keeper. Hulk tired of Bird Man taking Other Guy’s attention. Maybe Hulk want to go bowling with Bird Man. Maybe Hulk want to learn arrows. Other Guy doesn’t think of this.”

Even now as he lay by the fire he thought about those words. He hadn’t answered the Hulk. He simply rose to his feet as quickly and quietly as he could, thinking about where they had been when he ever so graciously exited the hellicarrier. He stumbled slowly away from the rage monster, keeping silent as he held his good arm across his chest. Clint walked in as straight a line as possible for almost an hour until he saw the cabin in the distance.

He thought about it all again now. Now that he was safe inside with a dwindling fire and a heartache so intense it burned his frozen bones. How the man he felt such a passion for turned on him. How he couldn’t talk Bruce back from his Green Side. How he couldn’t pierce the rage. How he couldn’t get his friend back. 

Clint felt sick as the sobs broke through. The physical pain melding with the emotional. The toll on his body and spirit being more than he could handle. Clint wrapped his good arm over his chest, hand gripping at his shoulder as if his arm were going to keep his chest from exploding with grief. He curled into his broken self as much as he could. He’d never felt so alone. So at a loss. At the end of his rope.

The flames flickered again as the wind outside picked up, howling at him and his loneliness. The fire would be out soon. Less than an hour unless he managed to get back outside for more wood. An excursion he was in no condition to make.

The room creaked around him, and a familiar smell haunted his senses. Bruce’s cologne.

He thought about the man who was most likely frozen in the woods. He thought about the man he loved in secret and how he would never see him again. He made no effort to dry the tears that flowed at the thought of the last words spoken to him were angry ones.

Clint’s eyes were closed hard when he felt the swell of the flames once more, the heat rising around him. The fire was coming back to life, having a few more logs tossed onto it. He tried to control the sobbing that racked him, knowing that someone had found him, and now not caring if they were here to rescue or murder him. He just didn’t want them to see him vulnerable.

The Hawk sniffled and wiped the water stains from his face as the floor behind him shifted and someone took up residence behind him, laying on the floor and shuffling in behind him. The scent of the man Clint adored overwhelmed him now, and the faint brush of chest hair against his back let him know. The sobs overcame him again, and he made no effort to control them.

There was a light kiss to his shoulder, the warm breath of Bruce danced across his skin as the salt water tears fell into his arm. Bruce’s arm traced Clint’s good one until he was mimicking the bird man’s position. 

Clint knew he hadn’t meant to hurt him. He knew he couldn’t control it. He knew Bruce was sorry, and that he’d never say it enough to feel like he’d fixed what he’d done. Even though Clint didn’t blame him for a second for what had happened.

Bruce buried his face in Clint’s neck and wept without reservation.


End file.
